A Sinn Féin victory in the Stormont Assembly elections will send the message that it is "business as usual" with the Northern Ireland Protocol, Jeffrey Donaldson has said.
The DUP leader was addressing a rally in Bangor, Co Down, where he said both the UK Government and the EU now recognised that the protocol needed to be changed.
Speaking ahead of the rally, Mr Donaldson said: "Unionism stands united in opposition to the protocol. That must continue to be our focus.
"There are too many divisions. This election will be won and lost on transfers.
"I want every unionist to give the DUP their first preference but I want them to then continue and transfer to the other pro-union candidates."
The rally is the latest in a series which have been taking place across Northern Ireland outlining unionist and loyalist opposition to the post-Brexit protocol, which sees additional checks on goods arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
The DUP leader continued: "The protocol has driven up haulage costs between GB and NI by 27% and placed a border between us and our most important trading partner - Great Britain as well as jeopardising our medicine supply in the middle of a health pandemic."
The meeting was also addressed by Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister as well as ex Labour MP Kate Hoey and former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib.
They are among a group who have launched legal action against the protocol, which is due to be heard at the Supreme Court.
The trio also spoke at an anti-protocol rally held earlier in the day in Ballymena, Co Antrim which heard that there can be no return of the powersharing Stormont Executive until the Northern Ireland Protocol is removed.
Mr Allister said: "We must bring the mendacious Prime Minister who put this iniquitous protocol upon us to the point where he has to make a choice.
"And the leverage we have is to make the Prime Minister choose: do you want to save the protocol, or do you want to save Stormont?
"You cannot have both.
"And the reason I say you can't have both is very simple: the price of Stormont is to implement the protocol and it is a price no unionist can pay or ever should have paid."
Ms Hoey said: "I think people are angry in the pro-union community.
"None of us want to go back to dreadful days of violence but we cannot have a situation where our Government is ignoring the majority community in Northern Ireland."
Referring to Thursday's Stormont elections, Mr Habib said: "We have to have a unionist majority in Stormont, we have to use that unionist majority to bring Stormont down.
"There can be no Stormont for as long as the protocol exists.
"If we get that unionist majority then it is down to you people to hold those politicians to account, to make sure that they do what they promised which is to not allow the Executive to form and to ensure Stormont is not reformed until the protocol goes.
"You cannot have Stormont and the protocol, the protocol has to go first."
Another rally is set to take place in Bangor, Co Down, this evening with the same three speakers alongside DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson and loyalist activist Jamie Bryson.
